Tesgüino is an artisanal

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...

produced by several Yuto-Aztec people.El Tesgüino
''Arqueologiamexicana.mx'' The Tarahumara people regard the beer as sacred, and it forms a significant part of their society.John Burnett
The Sacred Corn Beer of the Tarahumara
''Npr.org'', 25 March 2005
Anthropologist John Kennedy reports that "the average Tarahumaras spends at least 100 days per year directly concerned with tesgüino and much of this time under its influence or aftereffects."

Etymology

Tesgüino comes from the

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...

''tescuini'' which means "heartbeat".

Tradition

The Tarahumara people gather every year during Easter week (''semana santa'') and drink large amounts of Tesgüino together while following rituals. According to the anthropologist Bill Merrill of the Smithsonian Institution, the sacred drink chases large souls from the persons who drink it, "and so when people get drunk that's why they act like children ..because the souls that are controlling their actions are the little souls, like little children".

Varieties

The general Tarahumara term for an

alcoholic beverage An alcoholic beverage (also called an alcoholic drink, adult beverage, or a drink) is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol that acts Alcohol (drug), as a drug and is produced by Ethanol fermentation, fermentat ...

is "Sugíki"; and "batári" is used when the beer is specifically made from corn or

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.TARAHUMARA (rarámuri)
"paciki" is used when the beer is made from fresh corn stalks. While tesgüino made from corn is considered the most sacred, the Tarahumara also make beer from

agave ''Agave'' (; ; ) is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of the Americas and the Caribbean, although some ''Agave'' species are also native to tropical areas of North America, such as Mexico. The genus is primarily known for ...

and

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

, as well as other alcoholic beverages made from fruits such as

peach The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, n ...

es, berries,

crab apple ''Malus'' ( or ) is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple, crab apples, wild apples, and rainberries. The genus is native to the temperate zone ...

cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gree ...

fruits, and

mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus '' Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under gr ...

seeds.Tesguino
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Production

The beer is made from corn kernels which are soaked, sprouted, then ground up, boiled and left to ferment naturally with wild

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...

. A local grass is used in place of

hops Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant '' Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to w ...

for flavouring. The process begins by malting the corn and spreading it in a shallow basket covered with pine needles each day for four or five days. It is kept moist until the corn sprouts by which time the starch in the corn has been converted into smaller sugars. It is then mashed and boiled for eight hours. Varied herbs are ground up and mixed with water into a paste which is then fermented overnight by a fire. Then the paste is combined with the corn liquid and fermented for another three to four days. The beer-drinking is commenced almost immediately after its preparation, since the beer will usually grow rancid after 24 hours.

References

Notes

Boza Boza, also bosa, is a fermented beverage originating from the Middle East and made in parts of Southeast Europe, Central and Western Asia, Caucasus and North Africa. It is a malt drink made by fermenting various grains: wheat or millet in Alban ...

is an Eastern European beer made from wheat. #

Pulque Pulque (; nci, metoctli), or octli, is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. It is traditional in central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. It has the color of milk, a rather viscous c ...